sometimes. markets. can. find out what's really happening to the global economy is a report on. the aftermath of the russia's worst a river disaster in decades as the bodies of over one hundred people including many children have been recovered from the boulder river and the rescuers continue the search from. the american missile shield over europe remains of the main obstacle in russia u.s. relations as moscow wants illegal guarantees that it won't be targeted. and that the eurozone economic crisis deepens as island gap is downgraded to junk its a fueling fears the country may need

a second. well why news twenty four seven this is not c n n live from moscow revelations keep coming about the ill fated a voyage of the sunken a pleasure cruise on the volga river as a former captain says it was technically dead long before sunday's disaster over one hundred people are now officially confirmed dead after the bulgaria went down in just a matter of minutes in the republic of stan. and has the latest from the scene and we warn you may find some of the images in his report is startling. at the moment two hundred divers are working out in the volga three kilometers from the bank in shifts searching room by room inside the sunken well gary a pleasure cruiser and behind me the river ports the number of flowers and

cuddly toys and candles that are piling up against the walls of the river port here continues to grow our there's also another feeling growing here was jealous of grief and that's of anger and questions increasingly growing as the revelations that keep emerging about the ship just earlier here at the river port a former captain off that ship the bulgaria came and reveals some alarming details about the ship's life before its last voyage. i became captain of the vessel in two thousand and seven the ship had been renovated for a while before that there were big problems with the engines and power generators repeatedly mention that to the management and even had an argument with them these debates will continue as to what caused this tragic sinking but it doesn't do anything to relieve the grief here on the banks of the volga. this is the happy scene that should have been this ship is designed almost identically to the ball

carrier in this room almost identical to the one that children on that ship played in but for whatever reason their fate was very different. as crowds gathered in remembrance of those killed by the sinking of the volga pleasure boat. it was the younger victims that seemed to cast the longest shadow. these schoolgirls had lost one of their classmates. the most we study together for a year she never had arguments with anyone she was very kind to grow and was always ready to help it's as divers reached the play room one of the fallguy arias attacks they found the bodies of the children that had gathered there just before the boat

sunk some of once inside the boat the bodies were everywhere going to or cabins most of them were wearing the lifeless divers now have the awful task of bringing the bodies to the surface those left behind can only wonder at how fast their families were torn apart. our colleague was on that ship should mention a cruise together with her family husband five year old son and also she was pregnant and was to deliver her second baby in august she's not found yet only her husband managed to survive she and her son died. and for those children left suddenly without parents the terrible truth they may not be able to comprehend for years she lost her mother and further we ruled that we'll have to look after her and she's only one hundred years old knowledge that all you tell her you know we can't she wouldn't understand. there is much that people don't understand about

this disaster reports about the ship's engines failing about blocked emergency exits and elektra city failure that stopped any s.o.s. or evacuation instructions going out criminal cases have been opened into why two ships passing straight after the sinking didn't stop to pick up a single person into why the aging vessel was allowed to sail in the first place but for those who have lost loved ones the case will never be closed tom watson. and on our website i think dot com you can read the account of one man who alone and saved almost eighty people from the border area many of praise the captain of a ship but stopped and helped the stricken a pleasure cruise or he modestly points to his crew and passengers as the real heroes he said that everyone was touched by what they saw and rushed to help without hesitation he went on to describe how quote they took their own clothes and

gave them to the wounded there's more on our website r.t. dot com. washington's proposed missile shield over europe remains at the stumbling block in russian american relations but according to you for a minute sort of a lot off now in the united states artie is our guy later to go now joins us live from our washington bureau with more guy good to see you so it looks like our russia's foreign policy chief will have a chance to shoot some tough questions point blank today what's up what's going on over there in d.c. that are. oh foreign minister lavrov is meeting president obama this morning and it's taking place the meeting is taking place behind closed doors so there's no way from knowing what they're actually discussing it could be the weather but they are definitely more pressing issues and one of the most irritating ones in the relations between the two countries is america's missile defense plans in europe president obama has scrapped the bush administration missile defense plans but they're going ahead with a new one foreign minister lavrov said russia needs firm legally binding guarantees

that the project will not threaten russia's security washington has made sure in statements before but naso needs to have it on paper some analysts explained this urging their washer has been getting everything on paper with promises in the past that were not fulfilled for example when the soviet union collapsed russia was assured that nato would not be expanding towards its borders but it did its continued recruiting new members so there is an understanding among the russians that words are good but words even legally binding document are better as well despite certain sticking points that still remain in the relations between the two countries and is allowed for i've said the reset has worked he said now we have and i quote here a more reliable more predictable and more consistent partner so he's meeting president obama in a rather amicable and constructive mode in the last few years and the us have reached a landmark deal on arms without cooperation in ghana's then they've gone forward in preparations for russia's accession into the world trade organisation you know the

us administration is all for it but there is the u.s. congress which has to lift the jackson of any commitment it's long overdue it's a cold war rally but it's still there standing in the way of free flow of treat between the two countries because there's two forces and you want to retain those old cold war sentiments and this minister lavrov said habits die hard. and you're saying you know the moscow and washington do share a close friendship and it seems to be positive but again the european missile defense shield is a major major hurdle to overcome not being two of the world's most of those but plenty more to keep them busy apart from most talking about the. u.s. issues so what else is on the agenda. buggery on international issues there are certain disagreements and the are being discussed with regards to leave you for example for the lever of said colonel qaddafi must step down and there's no place for him in the future of libya and that's exactly view shared by

the obama administration as well but russia criticizes the scope of the foreign intervention in libya moscow sees the actions of the allied forces there was a violation of the u.n. mandate is to live or offset the resolution is being wrongly interpreted as anyone can do whatever they want would not scorsese's the west now clearly taking sides in a civil war and extending the conflict talking about syria for a minute the latter of said the attitude of the west is exclusively about exerting pressure on one of the parties namely the syrian government in person outside and moscow sees it as the wrong attitude is that he said it's sensible long message to the syrian opposition prompting them to believe that if they remain insistent in the situation keeps getting critical then the west will come to help them the way it is happening in libya miss a lot of us said it is unacceptable that the opposition to resort to violence agitating peaceful protesters even to engaging in armed clashes and in fact we turning them into targets for the police and security forces so those are different

approaches as you can see and they are being discussed here because you know the foreign minister but also you are going to live in d.c. thank you. well i still come in the program here on r.t. the battle for economic supremacies in asia look at the growing competition in trade between india and china and who seems to be on the losing end. but the worsening plight of the libyan people as the country faces a major hunger crisis following nato's aggressive bombing campaign. rupert murdoch's media empire has announced it's to withdraw its bid to buy outright control of the u.k.'s biggest satellite broadcaster b. sky b. it's the latest twist to the phone hacking crisis that's engulfed the company as the scandal goes global across the atlantic it's claimed that journalists try to bribe new york police officers for access to victims of voicemail u.s. senators are also calling for their own investigation into news corp meanwhile the

british prime minister david cameron has also demanded a probe into the nine eleven claims editor in chief of the news service richard and it's believed the stolen data could easily be misused and not just by tabloids where this does become a question for national security is the idea that police are selling private phone numbers and probably contact details of people like the royal family and the prime minister well this is not necessarily the same to sell these things to a newspaper as it would be to sell them to a terrorist organization but if you can do one you may be able to do the other so it's very serious the whole edifice of news international is deeply intertwined with the downing street machine all that has yet to come out and will cause a lot more headaches but i think what people talk to and. expecting is for the scandal to go up through the chief executive of news international to james murdoch and james murdoch himself many people say should step down whether he's for. this

skate without serious damage is also doubtful although i don't think he's going to retire or leave the helm of the company. now the explosive mixture of media and politics and the hacking scandal that's gripping the world's attention is also discussed in today's edition of crossfire or you can join people of illinois guests next hour here on r.t. but for now a quick preview. in this particular case with news of the world it looks more and more like you had reporters and editors who are engaging in criminal conduct there is no concept of free press anywhere in the world that enables journalists to break the law if someone hacked my voicemail i would love to see them in jail but if you look at the criticisms that are being leveled at murdoch it goes far beyond there people are using this as an opportunity to attack him for his politics and for a straight and see as first partisanship.

our top minutes past the hour here in moscow wiki leaks founder julian assange is fighting against extradition in a london court for a second day the world's most famous whistleblower is wanted in sweden for questioning over sexual assault allegations however investigative journalist tony gosling thinks the case against him is focused more on destroying his name but on presenting any substantial evidence. still hasn't been properly charged with any crime in sweden this is the crazy thing about this entire case they want to extradite him for questioning but he hasn't been properly charged and it seems that the european arrest warrant has been used for this there hasn't actually been any kind of protocol of face is the evidence presented in sweden to show that he has committed a crime this is just he's just a very basic suspect i would draw a comparison with what we've seen in the dominique strauss kahn case and that is that this looks to me to be some kind of sting operation so that the political

people that don't like what assange is doing a chance to get at him and he's becoming quite clear now that the extras can they may be actually no prosecution finally in new york against him and i think we may well see the same with the. you with r.t. america must die now the eurozone has been dealt a fresh as debt is downgraded to junk status by the biggest credit rating agency it's fueling concerns the country could need a second this comes a week after portugal's rating was also reduced and follows speculation that it's really seen it might soon ask for a helping hand pulled the whole m.e.p. for northwest england has told us the that the latest developments prove that the single currency union is simply not working this was always about politics it was not all economics the idea that you could have a colonies in the mediterranean in line with economies like germany fast growing economies like germany was never going to break the only way to get out of this

mess is for those countries to go back home to their national policies to devalue to get growth moving. and to get exports going and at the moment they can't use their debt because they couldn't caesar controlled by frankfurt they control by the european central bank they're not controlled by athens or lisbon hold even talk to the people out on the streets in athens and i just wonder how long it will be deprived of people i wouldn't streets in rome and in lisbon and in tokyo and this thing is contagious this thing will move right across the continent specifically in the mediterranean and the bigger issue now facing the european union is italy is really is the third largest economy in the eurozone the place largest economy in the world i think the euro zone can actually cope with greece and portugal the smaller economies if italy goes the whole thing could cave in because if italy goes italy's economy intertwined with spain and spain and italy go then we are in serious trouble the euro is inextricably to the whole project in italy into the

european union if the eurozone goes i quite frankly can see this whole thing breaking up but that is why they're so desperate to keep it that's why this was desperate to say that we in the u.k. are fed up with bailouts are the only way for these countries to survive if the break out of this prison which is the euro zone. the world's two fastest growing economies india and china have reached an economic faceoff the two countries have huge mutual exports but on india's part it's mostly wrong materials while china specializes in a new function and its trade imbalance is putting new delhi at a growing disadvantage so it is perhaps true reports. it's dragon versus tiger in the battle for asian supremacy india and china two of the fastest growing economies with the world's largest population vying for power and prestige in asia and beyond where india led the way in i t and back office is china research head in mobilizing its masses onto the factory floor fuelling

a huge trade deficit and in reality india is forced to accept. all of. their. sources. were do things that we india opposed world class space in nuclear programs yet struggles to create every day jobs making every day goods something this cotton tycoon knows all too well and it's cheaper for him to export to china to get the job done then let india buy it back. we make a profit of ten percent more in the international market than the domestic market ironically it's indian efficiency that's part of the problem with supply rapidly outpacing domestic demand. if you don't export then the cotton prices in india will crush and farmers will suffer as they won't get even the original price this will increase the quantity of cotton and even the indian government is encouraging the export of course and can the cotton fields of india lies the heart of the indian

chinese trade relationship more than seventy percent of the exports for india to china are wrong materials like cotton however ninety percent of the exports in china to india are manufactured goods if india is selling well then why should it matter well having a twenty billion dollar gap with your next door neighbor puts power in their hands and makes jobs and savings dry up at home and economists know that only by sewing up a successful manufacturing sector will india's large unskilled workforce be soaked up but it's a blind spot that's leading to blind faith. and we should focus on the models and of the new the growing wealth of. different scene future indian traders seem satisfied to because the set up means the money keeps rolling in. the benefits in exporting is that we get

a bigger volume of cotton and we also get paid on time but new delhi is worried knowing it has to cut its cloth before its run of luck is sewn up preassure there are t.v. in the air india. well you can always find more from marty on our web site including the latest news and blogs and expert analysis here are some of the items i got for you there right now at r.t. dot com a snapshot from the stars how you could soon be able to see a picture of yourself taken from one bit that's too special by cameras installed at the international space station plus from catwalk to kept there was anything but model behavior of russian a fashion show as a world of beauty turned ugly appear to have the full story behind the high heeled hostility at the bottom to top. of it already suffered months of civil war but now hunger could be the latest threat facing people in libya tripoli says the balance has meant that not even

a fifth of the country's harvests have been gathered at one of the dire consequences of fighting continues over the next few months steven brown from a front page online magazine says that nato has rushed to intervene in libya looks like a major mistake the whole thing's backfired on board because the nato they thought was going to be an easy victory they simply got caught up in. in their own human rights in broadly going through the u.n. waging war of the u.n. and this is the result you know there's no decision this crossing tens of millions of dollars civilians are being killed libyan civilians there to assure that the war was never in libyan civilians it was about making sure the oil stayed safe with her britain france. i know plenty more on our top stories on our website including interactive content where you can get involved if you are looking to r.t. dot com or you can tell us what you think may bring around the operation in libya bring it so and that is let's now have a look at the stats and see what what your opinions are and where they stand

a pretty divided the majority of you believe massive protests in the countries with just part of the alliance will put a stop to the campaign while others are split between three options i think the end of may come but the escalating cost of the operation the killing of colonel gadhafi by a rise in terre haute signs make sure you log onto our t.v. dot com and have your say. all right so let's check out some other international headlines for you this hour thousands of protesting in the egyptian capital cairo for the sixth day running demanding the removal of the military council and threatening to expand their sit ins rather. demonstrators are also calling for ousted president hosni mubarak and his aides to face prosecution of hundreds of protesters during the uprising in february the military has warned protesters against using violence but more. about. the half brother of the afghan president hamid karzai has just been varied in kandahar. karzai was murdered in his home there on choose day the taliban has described the assassination as

biggest achievement in ten years shortly after the ceremony two explosions were reported in kandahar and a regional governor narrowly escaped a roadside bombing on his way to the funeral. it's time now for business update with maria. how mark onto business here and i see now the ratings agencies like s. and p. and moody's have become the subject of vicious attacks from politicians across europe the agency's claim to give an independent assessment of the credit worthiness of countries but complain for helping cause the crisis by stirring up alarm thoughts discuss the son joined by no questions for that australia bank hello and thank you for joining us but we saw just how important is the assessment of a credit rating agency. very important in two different ways there first of all

important because they set minimum standards against which investors can judge themselves there's a. credit rating which is applied to a bond and if a bond doesn't meet that credit rating an investor is simply not allowed to buy it so i think it's important in that sense it's important also because it sets a psychological tone but i think we shouldn't over exaggerate their role because often the ratings agencies themselves i'm merely following what the market has already done so if the market is already moved to raise the interest rate on a country's debt significantly then the ratings agency will view that as having been a sustainable move and then we'll move it's a rating to as a bit of interaction there's a bit of ebb and flow there's a bit of a two way movement there but they are very important in setting minimum criteria against which investors can actually buy bonds now then of why do you think that they're attracting all these complaints from politicians. that's

a very good question actually at the moment attracting a lot of complaints simply because they're doing the job rather well now the ratings agencies quite justifiably came in for a lot of criticism during the global financial crisis they were accused of being overoptimistic they were taking some fairly generous assumptions about its ability to repay there were sometimes overlooking some fairly fatal flaws in some derivative structures and it's fair to say i think most reasonable people would agree that perhaps the ratings agencies did contribute to the global financial crisis however i think there's been a notable improvement in standards over the course of the last two or three years and the fact that the ratings agencies now are actually getting so much criticism from european finance ministers probably suggest that doing the job rather well. what there is an argument that their ratings are biased that part a position of the u.k. is far worse than in russia for instance yet it has

a better rating. i don't think they're necessarily biased i think what they are doing is taking into account a broader range of factors than simply debts and the immediate ability of a country to repay its for example japan has got a debt to g.d.p. ratio of more than two hundred percent but the ratings agencies are rather happy to live with that because of the number is significantly higher than greece for example but the ratings agencies say two things first of all japan is a developed economy and it will over time create tax revenues and also it's got a very high level of savings so therefore it's able to finance its debt through internal sources when they look at the united states which is currently got a aaa rating frankly i think if the u.s. was in europe it would be something like a single a think the u.s. moved most definitely downgraded if it was in europe but they look at us and say traditionally the u.s. has been a reserve currency that investors all over the world want to hold they see that trade is the nominated in u.s.

dollars and that excel. it's what's known as send you accuse of a right to some income which otherwise wouldn't accrue to the country so do it is necessarily bias but i can understand that sometimes it can seem a little unfair but actually i think that unfairness itself and that charge that somehow the ratings agencies are not doing well actually i think it was shows that they're doing their job. now let's go back to russia for a second prime minister putin says he'd like to see a rock star rating agency know how to go about building trust and be fair like he said. well it's a really ironic out certain here because the only way in which an a ratings agency can build independent global credibility is if it seems to be free of all pressure now the only way in which it can really be seen to be free of all pressure is to produce a lower ratings on the ball news all the assets that it starts to consider rather than produce high ratings because after all if

a new ratings agency whether it was in europe were losing russia or whether it was anywhere else in the world if a new ratings agency in iraq it was decided that its opinion the rating was substantially higher than anyone else had previously thought i think that would raise grave doubts about its credibility so ironically enough the only way that a new agency can build credibility is to produce a lower rating which of course would defeat the whole purpose of the object. nick parsons global head of foreign exchange bradley at national australia bank thank you very much for your insights. now let's take a look at the markets u.s. markets open this hour we are seeing positive in the seas there after a better than expected chinese growth give a lift to sentiment and the european markets are mixed this hour after a downgrade of ireland by moody's rating at strange agency that's suffering that war is in focus group as are required six percent around making it hard to gain or

and that's as the luxury goods maker reporter revenues are very precise and the first quarter. and here in moscow the markets are also mixed as direction remains uncertain in light summer trade. let's take a look at some individual movers on the bisects burbank has slipped into the red that the losses are limited by the earlier reports of a hundred eighteen percent jump in first after that profits were all carli is up more than one other have percent after the evening left the polls half imports from russia and coal miner at a spot stay at its continuing its rally on expectations of a take up of it from b p. and that's all the business news for that would join us for another obviates any less than an hour's time.

the. machine would be so much brighter if you knew about songs from funds to freshen some of. these stunts on t.v. don't come.